Jump to content

RaisedByPikas

Members
  • Posts

    252
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by RaisedByPikas

  1. There is no need for tails long enough to confuse the rap side and tail side of an EDK. It shortens how far you can rappel and adds another thing you can fuck up. I've heard a friend setting up to rappel on the wrong side because they left 5' tails but catching it before weighting the system. 18" is fine and leaves enough tail for the knot to roll a couple times. If you look at the data all of the properly tensioned and dressed EDK's didn't roll until about 1000lbs or more even when wet. That's 1000lbs on the knot side which means at least 2000lbs on the entire system.
  2. I think the way we took to get to the upper col was much easier than what is on the summitpost map but I haven't tried the summitpost approach. Basically we stayed on the hiking trail until the ground became about 50/50 rock and heather. By this point we thought we were too high and were almost at the same elevation as the upper col. We trended up and around the ridge to the right and it was a short hike down (maybe 50 vertical ft) some easy slabby boulders to the col. Don't be tempted to climb into the gully to climbers right of the hiking trail, you should be above it.
  3. The main problem was the Mazamas putting up fixed lines for a large group to prussic and clogging the route big time. This lead to a breakdown of the normal wait your turn or communicate with the other team about passing procedure as a few groups (including my group that took an alternate to pitch one climbers right) tried to climb variations to get around them.
  4. When I was climbing there last fall there was a dog laying by the trail unleashed. I put my hand down for it to sniff and the damn thing snapped and came at me. I had to take a few steps back and luckily the dog relented before I had to take action. Handler acted completely surprised and embarrassed, like it had never happened before. BS. I think the dogs name was Abbey, medium sized, and it was with two female climbers. Any dog that has ever shown unprovoked aggression towards humans does not belong in public. I have no problem with unleashed well behaved animals.
  5. I haven't been up to the summit in august but you might find yourself trying to set up camp in something that looks like this if you cant find a site that someone else cleared. The one person I know that spent a night on the summit would never do it again and said they had to spend hours chopping down the penitentes.
  6. An easy way to clip into fixed lines is to clip them with the biner attached to one of your prusics instead of carrying a dedicated sling to clip onto fixed lines. Less junk around your junk and its no slower. This technique would work really will with a tibloc or something like that. The fixed lines on the DC last year weren't on very steep sections but a fall could have taken you over something really steep. We didn't use prussics on them, just clipped them on the way down to prevent a really bad fall, messing with prussics can still be slow even if you are pretty good at them.
  7. Its a long way around from mazama to marblemount going via stevens pass. Google normally has it at 1.5 hours via 20 but its 5.5 hours if WA pass is closed.
  8. This is what is known as a divide by zero error. If there is no air resistance then you would keep accelerating to infinite velocity. But at high altitudes you would have to fall further to get up enough speed to achieve the ideal glide ratio so a high altitude base jumper should need more vertical distance before they can start tracking away from the mountain.
  9. Bolt hangars don't take a "shock" load in the sense that most climbers define because the rope is what controls the force. Obviously if you take a fall directly onto your personal anchor, climb with a static rope, or something like that then it might be different. A true shock load in the engineering sense where failures happen without deformity do the the interaction of the shock or pressure waves within the piece probably doesn't happen much in climbing even with a fall on static gear.
  10. What kind of climbing will you be doing? "warm winter boots" might be overkill for a majority of the type of climbing around here, especially for someone starting out.
  11. backpackinglight.com has a lot of down quilt fans but they seem to be mostly good weather, low elevation gram counters. For me I cant see how they are worth the few ounces of weight savings, everytime i roll over i would get a big draft. I roll over a lot when camping on snow...
  12. There are also good crevasses to lower into and climb out closer to the downstream side of that large flat ice sheet below the seracs.
  13. They must have had some calm winds for those shots up high. Those shots were awesome.
  14. Does anyone have any Icicle Creek updates? The webcams make it look pretty bad today.
  15. Trip: Prusik Peak - West Ridge Date: 7/8/2012 Trip Report: Ben, Luke, Brian and I tried Prusik peak again this time with much better weather for Luke and myself. We approached via Aasgard Pass and made camp near Gnome Tarn where a herd of 10 goats joined us for the evening hoping to score some fresh piss. How many goats in this picture? The climb went great and was uneventful except for a few minutes dealing with a stuck rope on the final rappel. We got started climbing around 6AM and were on top by 8:30AM doing the climb in 5 pitches. No gear anchors were neccesary as you can sling rocks for all of the anchors or use a rap station after the first pitch. The slab crux was pretty easy, there are lots of little depressions to put your feet. I personally thought the hardest part of the climb was pulling over the top of the dihedral at the start of the final pitch. (the one to get up to the big ledge before the lieback flake). The others stayed towards the outside of the easier summit chimney (the one around the corner) while I decided for a more intimate climbing experience by getting a little deeper. Face South for this chimney unless you want to spin yourself around near the top. Descent was 3 double rope raps off the north side. The last one probably didnt need to be a double. Thanks to Luke and Brian for the pictures. Gear Notes: Set of nuts, cams to 3". The #3 is only used on the lieback so if you are comfortable with those you can leave it at home. Approach Notes: Aasgard pass was mostly snow free
  16. Glacier Peak takes 3 nights for most parties and is not too technical. Ive never climbed Shasta but if its worth a plane ticket then Glacier peak would be too.
  17. For a little less technical of a climb look at Sahale peak. The views can't be beaten and its a good intro to being in an alpine environment.
  18. So, despite the hassle of fighting it, and despite Ranger Vicky's protestations about "all the good the money goes toward," And by that, you mean the states general fund. None of that money goes back into the parks. The only thing that has changed from before the passes to now is the parking tickets. Hey, none of it goes to the WA General Fund. 84% of the Discover Pass receipts goes directly to the WSP and is the only funding WSP now gets - they receive no general funds. Every one of you who are so miserably cheap you have to try and scam around it instead of dropping the staggering sum of $30 a year for WA parks should just stay out of them. Where do discover pass fines go to?
  19. As of yesterday you can find plenty of snow free campsites at Colchuck lake. Aasguard pass looked to be 75% snow covered with most of the exposed rocks near the bottom and on the rising traverse over to Aasgard pass.
  20. Based on the snow pack into the enchantments (from a week and a half ago) flotation is not necessary, even when there is no bootpack.
  21. Trip: Enchantment Peak - Date: 6/3/2012 Trip Report: Luke (who took all pictures), Brian, Mike, and myself set out to climb the West ridge of Prusik Peak for our Boealps Intermediate Class Alpine 1 outing. We approached via Colchuck Lake and made good time up Aasgard pass although I started loosing steam near the top. Following a short hike over towards Prusik we found some bare rock to set up camp on. Campsite Time Lapse The wind blew all night and weather was constantly threatening so we took our time getting over to Prusik and the weather seemed to be improving. However after scrambling up to the base of the climb the wind started blowing again, there was light snow, and ominous looking clouds. The rock was dry but after some discussions we opted to turn in our hardman cards and go for the Type I fun of heading up Enchantment peak instead of freezing our asses and fingers off for the next few hours. We dropped extraneous climbing gear at Prusik Pass and started cramponing up Enchantment. It probably took an hour to reach the top but I wasnt timing so I could be wrong. The top of Enchantment is a short easy rock scramble with 2-3 4th (maybe low 5th?) class moves to get on top of the summit block. Since I was bringing up the rear and everyone had been waiting for me I spent a minute or two on the summit then reversed my moves down. After collecting gear we headed back to camp where we ran across Ryan on his way to solo the West Ridge of Prusik. Deconstructing camp and heading back down to the cars was uneventful. Aasgard pass was perfect plunge stepping the whole way. Had dinner in Leavenworth by 6:00 PM. Gear Notes: Crampons were helpful in the morning Approach Notes: Aasgard Pass still snow covered
  22. In college I was approached by members of some christian group trying to raise money for a mission trip over spring break...to cabo san lucas.
×
×
  • Create New...